eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
The Business Weekly had a candid interview with Dr Lance Mambodiani, the CEO of Steward Bank. The interview addressed some of the challenges faced by the bank as a result of their growth from about 26 000 customers when they started in 2013 to over 520 000 customers to date.
Dr Mambodiani explained how social media has played a major role in how they interact and service their customers, as well as how they have dealt with the influx of negative feedback.
He also revealed how 90 percent of the bank’s income generated daily is from mobile and internet banking. Steward Bank as a result is steering more of its resources to utilising their sizeable mines of ‘big data’ to create algorithmic business solutions to improve their current systems.
Dr Mambodiani said that since 2016 the bank has been looking into creating a cloud-based core banking system as opposed to the T24 backbone that is currently supporting the bank.
He revealed that since the signing of Liquid Telecoms’ deal with Microsoft to offer cloud solutions to the Zimbabwean and African market, Steward Bank may be closer to developing a solid cloud-based core banking system than ever before.
The bank has positioned itself as the ‘future of banking’, as it drives itself towards a branch-light banking model, seeing them reducing the initial 34 branches set up by TN Bank down to only eight branches. Dr Mambodiani says Steward Bank is well aware of the effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on not just the financial services sector, but the economy as a whole, and is determined to evolve itself and its customers with the times.
The 3 year old bank has come under significant criticism in the past 6 months and has a challenging road ahead to get back into good graces with customers at large. You can watch the full interview on the Business Weekly Youtube channel, “Business Weekly TV”, as well as on our social media pages under “ebusinessweekly”.
